Courses
Artificial Intelligence in Games
Understand the differences between traditional AI and AI applied to game development, where other factors such as playability are more relevant that the oponent’s intelligence level. Be familiar with the practical problems when developing AI for video games, and with the several techniques applied in comercial video games. Know how to design and build an AI system for a video game independently of its genre (action, sport, strategy, narrative).
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
To acquire general notions about agents and multi-agent systems; knowing how to identify and classify agents and environments, according to different properties. Knowing how to develop complex systems and systems from different application areas, using an agent-oriented methodology. Knowing how to define a society of agents in order to solve a specific problem. Being able to design agents with reactive, deliberative and hybrid architectures. Being able to create societies of agents that communicate, in a practical way, using suitable languages and platforms.
Computer Graphics for Games
This course covers both theory and practice of game engine software development. It delves into the different engine subsystems including, but not limited to, rendering, character animation, and physics, and details the articulation required to support gameplay development. By the end of this course, students should understand how modern game engines work, and be able to design and develop their own game engines.
Game Design
This course grants the students the opportunity to develop their skills on experience design and prototyping for games. The learning process is sustained in the discussion of what is a game, what are its components and what is its relation to the players (having in mind their differences). It is expected that the student develop design documents and prototypes to support his/her work on the course.
Game Development Methodology
Present a vision of the different methodologies and technologies involved in the development of digital games discussing the main features and issues in each one. Grant students with conceptual tools and techniques to develop user interfaces for games with special emphasis on player controls. Develop the ability to reflect and test the player experience and gameplay. Discuss the role of conceptual modelling and user testing. Highlight the importance to take a user centred approach in the exploration of the player experience.
Multimedia Content Production
Know the different types of multimédia information and how to manipulate them to poduce multimedia content. To understand the technological constraints that affect Production. To understand critical factors affect the success of a production, namely in aspects such as capture, encoding, processing and visualization of the different media. To know the different kinds of available authoring tools. To create Multimedia contents; To identify the different contexts in which multimedia can be consumed, with emphasys on online and network issues (evaluate bandwidth, latency, synchronization, etc.) and mobile devices. Introduce some advanged multimedia usages such as procedural modelling, generative art augmented reality. Apply efficient methods of multimedia content retrieval.
Thesis
Believable Interactions Between Synthetic Characteres
The human player is often required to interact and cooperate with synthetic characters, which also cooperate and interact with each other. However, unless the action is tightly linear and scripted, the expression of interaction is often confusing and difficult to understand by the human player. This work explores how traditional animation principles can be applied to the expression of interaction between the actors, both synthetic and human, and make the communication and cooperation more believable and the experience more immersive. To validate our work, we implemented our model in a multiplayer sports-game, where each character is an artificial player, and asked participants to evaluate videos of the interactions. The data we collected suggests that our approach not only significantly improves believability, but also makes the interactions between agents easier to understand and the action easier to interpret.
Virtual Tutor - Virtual Tutoring Agent using Empathy and Rapport Techniques
Going to University is a big change for someone and the student normally enters University feeling motivated. However, when the difficulties start to arrive and the reality that the effort required to succeed is much bigger than on the previous steps of their academic lives starts dawning on the students that just entered University they tend to lose motivation and cannot find the right methods of dealing with these loss of motivation, some of them fail courses they would on other circumstances find easy. Some universities have decided to implement a tutoring program in which the students are accompanied by a real tutor of the faculty. We intend to add to this program by delivering a tutor that is always available for the student and will help them emotionally. We brought the metaphor of two tutor characters with complimentary personalities to accompany the student throughout their semester.We studied what factors will help the student's emotional state and we arrived at rapport, empathy and relationship. We did an exploratory work on which one was more important by showing different behaviors for a virtual tutor agent in an app environment. This work was partially supported by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) with ref. UID/CEC/50021/2013, and FCT grant from project Tutoria Virtual with ref. TDC/IVC-PEC/3963/2014